Prince Williams Forest National Park via VRE?

Haven’t done it yet, but I’ve thought of doing something similar to jump start a potential multi-day bike trip to Hampton Roads at some point, just going to Fredericksburg and riding from there south. I can see you already came across the VRE bike policy page. Can’t offer anything more on that particular count.

As for alternate ways down there, check out ridewithgps.com, go to Plan a Route, and enable to the OSM Cycling layer. You’ll see US Bike Route 1 mapped out. It follows the MVT from DC to Mount Vernon and then roads and sidepaths from there. Should do the trick. IIRC, USBR 1 goes right past the forest.

@tour guide 99045 wrote:

Alternatively, can someone suggest a safe enough bike route from downtown DC to Prince Williams Forest?

I grew up in PW County and am extremely familiar with that area. I now live in Arlington. The difference between these two places is night and day regarding bicycling conditions. Although my recent visits to PW have been entirely by car, I’ll offer some suggestions for cycling from Occoquan to the PWFP back entrance off 234.

US Bike Route 1 follows Minnieville Road all the way, but I would highly recommend avoiding most of that road. It has a good sidepath from Old Bridge to Fowke. There is also a sidepath from Cardinal to Spriggs, although that requires more attention due to numerous driveway crossings. Both sidepaths are along the north (i.e. westbound) side of the road. But the real problem is the 3.5-mile stretch from Fowke to Cardinal. Utterly abysmal: 6 lanes of heavy motor traffic through a commercial district with frequent driveways and intersections. There are narrow sidewalks very close to the road (contiguous on both sides, I think) which are somewhat rideable due to the scarcity of pedestrians, but needless to say it is unpleasant at best.

My recommendation would be to add miles and ride through residential neighborhoods instead. Here are two such suggestions:
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/577895006
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/577902652

I can vouch for the first one. It consists entirely of 25MPH residential roads, full-width MUPs along high-speed arterials, plus a couple of bike/ped connections that Google doesn’t seem to know about yet (Devils Reach to Brooke Farm, Beaver Ford to Chinn Library). Note that there are no wayfinding signs along the trails between Chinn/Trowbridge/Beaver Ford. I believe Chinn is the first cutoff to the right from that trail when heading westbound. Once widening is completed, PW Parkway will have a parallel MUP from Minnieville to Old Bridge (so one will be able to alternately ride up to Trowbridge then over to Chinn along the Parkway), but right now the situation is dicey with the construction, and I’ve seen people walking and riding dangerously close to 45MPH+ traffic at times…

Not very familiar with the second route, but I believe it would be a decent option also. (As long as you are comfortable with on-road cycling. The Occoquan Rd and Blackburn Rd parts are definitely not noob-friendly! I believe the Rippon Blvd MUP is complete now, but I haven’t been back there in years.)